Citizenship and Immigration committee  Madam Chair and distinguished members of the committee, families have had to face a heart-wrenching reality since the pandemic began. Prolonged separation for indeterminate periods and the passage of time merely heighten the fear and suffering that families experience. I am here

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We started our first application in September 2018. This is our second application. When we started our first application, we did it here in Canada under common law. His visa had expired in the meantime, and he was asked to submit his application outside of Canada. I have a chil

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We don't need an interview since we lived together in Canada. We have a lot of proof of our Canadian lifestyle together. We're not pending an interview right now. We actually received the pre-arrival letter, but I have heard that it can collect dust for up to six months. With the

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Definitely.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We see there is movement compared to when it was COVID and all the visa offices were shut down. We're still waiting for interviews. We haven't received any interviews at this point, which is huge. Some people have waited over 18 months just for an interview. There are also the e

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's hit or miss. It depends on the file. From what I have seen, even a healthy young couple will be asked to do a medical. It's confusing. We don't know why some people are given extensions and others aren't given extensions, but given the situation with COVID, you would think

Citizenship and Immigration committee  From what I heard, they were offering video conferencing, and that was part of the announcement on September 25. Honestly, from what I've heard, they're not equipped to do these video conferences yet. Considering that these are Canadian employees in these offices all over the wor

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Exactly. Most of them work from home, but still, there needs to be a quick, efficient way in order to serve people.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  At this point, we need to speed up the process by giving electronic visas as well. That would be great. Abolishing the paragraph 179(b) for visitor visas would be great as well.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Dhaliwal, thank you so much for that question. In our group, we have 8,000 members who we take care of, who we oversee. From what I've seen, these numbers are not adding up at this point. We have seen advancement. We've seen people receive their pre-arrivals or requests for

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That is great news, but my question to that is actually, if you're digitizing these files, do you need uploads? Do you need us to send it by mail first, and then after that you digitize it, or can we just upload the actual documents without having to send them by mail? To me, i

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for that question, Ms. Normandin. Of course the announcement gave us hope, but it's up to the discretion of the officers. In other words, they have the power to decide whether to give us a visitor visa. In addition, waiting times for visas have exploded; they've gone f

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. Today I asked the group whether there had been any refusals. I got at least five emails including documents citing paragraph 179(b) as the ground for denial. It depends on the country concerned. It seems as though they're granting more visitor visas for Mexico, but the fewe

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, of course. I completely agree with Ms. Mira. Our group has the same feeling. It's fortunate that we teamed up because we're stronger together. That's how we mobilized and met the various opposition members so they could, I hope, make changes to immigration. That's it.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. We often conduct surveys these days, in which people really participate and…